


Routine

by pendrecarc



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, M/M, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Routines are dangerous. Finch indulges.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Routine

**Author's Note:**

> From [emef](http://archiveofourown.org/users/emef/pseuds/emef)'s prompt for pining and surveillance.

At the beginning, right after the ferry, Harold didn’t bother justifying it. He didn’t really think about it at all. There were three traffic cameras with a decent view of their front door— _her_ front door, he didn’t live there any longer—and two private security cameras that provided different angles of the stoop. He wasn’t quite sure how long he sat there staring at the displays Nathan had used, in the abandoned library Nathan had repurposed, but before he noticed he’d put his hands to the keyboard the monitors had lit up with live feeds of their—her—home.

It was hours before she came back. He thought at first that the picture quality was too poor for him to see her face clearly, but then he realized his vision had gone blurry. She was inside before he could wipe his eyes, and he had to resist the urge to rewind the feed—he’d seen that she was alive and intact, and he hadn’t hurt one glowing hair on her head.

If he couldn’t see her face, he might let himself believe that.

He routed the feeds to his phone so they were a constant companion as he built a cover story (not his best, but he was hardly _at_ his best) and checked into the hospital under one of his more established aliases. When he checked out AMA two days later he was dangerously compromised by the drugs, and when he tried to stop taking the drugs he was just as compromised by the pain, but when he resurfaced from it all in relative safety for long enough to be aware of what he was doing his fingers moved automatically to check the feeds.

He stared at the patterns of comings and goings until it sank in that he’d just missed his own funeral.

After that he tried to tell himself he was watching to keep her safe. What he thought he’d do if anything happened, he’d no idea—numbers kept coming, they kept trickling in to be followed by police reports and obituaries, every single one—and if he couldn’t save anyone with an infallible source whispering warnings in his ear, what was he going to do if government assassins showed up at her door?

That justification failed, but he kept watching. He’d already made such monumentally reprehensible errors in judgment, already suffered such unforgivable lapses in morality that there was no use agonizing over one more transgression. He hacked one of Universal Heritage’s competitors and created three years of back-payments on a life insurance policy for Grace’s fiancee, then added a record of an alteration to the policy two years prior making her the beneficiary. (They’d moved in together two years ago, had spent a weekend painting the library and trying to build the bookshelves themselves because it had seemed like a good idea at the time, until sitting atop a pile of mismatched boards Grace had looked at him and started laughing. Her hair had been covered in sawdust, but her smile had been as brilliant as ever. She’d snatched his phone from him and returned it with the number of a contractor keyed in, and they’d settled down to a friendly and familiar argument over whose editions of Trollope they’d keep and whose would go to the thrift shop.)

He stopped watching the feeds. Instead he developed a routine, and he developed an app, and early mornings found him with a paper cup in hand watching for the glimpse of blowing scarf and hair that meant he hadn’t quite destroyed everything he’d touched.

It wasn’t as though he’d never watched her before. He’d hacked her computer and pieced together most of her life story when the Machine had led him to her. He’d invaded countless corners of her life before he understood why she of all people was relevant. This wasn’t so different.

Remembering this, in turn, helped him understand why another number kept coming up without explanation, a number that could easily have been victim or perpetrator dozens of times over but was neither of those, a number that led him down the rabbit hole of army records and highly classified government files. When he resurfaced this time, he had a partner.

The interesting thing about Mr. Reese—there were many interesting things, but the one in question at the moment—was that he knew he was being watched. He knew, he expected it, and he didn’t seem to mind much; oh, he registered the occasional protest for form’s sake, but Harold could counter these with airy comments about glass houses and everyone was satisfied. He had a very real suspicion that Mr. Reese _liked_ it, in fact, that he found some reassurance in knowing his every move was catalogued. He thought at first it was just a habit formed by years of the Agency's monitoring, but it occurred to him later that he was the first person to know everything there was to know about Mr. Reese and still expect goodness of him.

The realization came to him like a gift, and Harold wasn’t even certain to which of them it was being offered. Grace had been like that, too. He could not present her with anything without gaining as much as he’d given, could not accept anything from her without knowing her pleasure matched his own.

Knowing the precise time at which Mr. Reese turned off the lights in his apartment, hearing a long stride fall into step with his halting ones, cleaning up the colored sprinkles scattered across his keyboard: these became as much a part of Harold’s routine as those paper cups in the park. Two things he hadn’t quite destroyed, two warm bodies so close he could almost reach out both his hands and feel them on either side.

The fact that he knew he wouldn’t ever do so was immaterial next to the knowledge that he _could_ , if he would ever let himself.

Occasionally, of course, his routine was disturbed.

The hours after they came back from Washington were taken up with business. Someone had to verify that Root was still secured where they’d delivered her, that she was safe and others were safe from her and that she was being treated well. Someone had to debrief Shaw to the extent that she would allow herself to be debriefed. (Aside from her undoubted potential as an asset, Harold gathered that she and Mr. Reese had developed a violently successful partnership for the brief time they’d shared a common goal, and he resolved to do what he could to cultivate this.) And someone had to collect Bear, assure him that he hadn’t been abandoned, walk him and bathe him and complain when he drooled all over a pair of Alden wingtips. If Harold himself got just as much reassurance from the interaction that was nobody’s business but his own.

Mr. Reese’s apartment windows went dark at three-thirteen in the morning.

He made himself wait until dawn to reestablish the other part of his routine. He closed his hand around the paper cup, breathed in the scent of steeping tea, and sat down on his usual bench. He was twenty minutes into his vigil when the bench shifted as another body settled down beside him.

“Thought I might find you here.”

“Was that a guess, Mr. Reese, or have you found time to plant a bug in these glasses as well?”

“Glass houses, Finch.” Harold let himself hope that the familiar parroting of his own words meant his betrayals were forgiven. “Do you think you deserve an apology?”

Perhaps not. “I was hoping we might call it even.”

“Hmm.” He considered various interpretations of that in silence. At length Mr. Reese cleared his throat. “You come here most mornings. Always, after a difficult number.”

“I should probably stop.” Mr. Reese was quiet, as he so often was, and Harold let himself rest in that stillness before saying, “Routines are dangerous. Ms. Groves—” It was his turn to clear his throat. “Root found Grace, you see. Sought her out. I let myself think this—indulgence—wasn’t doing anyone any harm. I suppose I should have known better.”

“She keeps your photograph in the living room.” In all this time, Harold hadn’t allowed himself to peer inside her home, hadn’t indulged that far, but he knew the photograph in question. He could scarcely recognize himself in it now. “You think she’d mind?”

“The routine?”

“Most people would call it stalking.”

Glass houses, again. But wasn’t this the final justification, the real one? “She’d be furious, but not about this. I—I knew her, Mr. Reese, and even if she hated me for everything else, she would want me to have this.” That didn’t make it right; he knew exactly how wrong it was. He also knew she would consider this just another gift. Grace was unstintingly generous to people who had hurt her.

Mr. Reese shifted a little beside him. “What else do you think she’d want you to have, Harold?”

His throat had gone dry, and the tea was cold. “If past experience is to be relied upon, Mr. Reese, the answer is far more than I’m willing to ask for.”

He kept his eyes fixed on her door as an arm settled behind his shoulders, wool just brushing against wool. He felt himself growing tense, but when nothing but that still silence followed he began to relax by degrees.

The door opened. Her scarf was sea-green today, the contrast against deep red luminous even from this distance. He followed it as she moved down the street and, eventually, out of sight.

“You could try asking,” John said. Harold twisted to look at him at last. The angle brought his shoulders back against the firm weight of John’s arm. “Or would that make this too easy?”

“I don’t think there’s any danger of that,” Harold said as drily as he could. John gave one of those smiles that were so easy to miss if one didn’t want to see it; Harold had gotten very good at spotting those, but then he was also very good at wanting.

“Good thing we’re both patient men.” John removed his arm to reach for the empty cup, but Harold didn’t have time to miss its weight, because another hand had reached for his elbow to help him to his feet. “There’s a pastry shop on the corner.”

“I’m aware, Mr. Reese.”

“I never thought you weren’t, Finch,” John replied.

“Then lead the way.” Instead he dropped his hand from Harold’s elbow and shortened his stride. As though in proof that some things could be that easy, they fell at once into step.


End file.
